Supplement success! (gratuitous title so it will come up in a google search: Ramard Total Joint Care for dogs)

Since we saw that Clue’s pelvis is always going to be hinky, and in an effort to address the spinal issues that are part and parcel of owning a dwarfed breed, I’ve been doing a lot of reading about bone and joint supplements.

A lot of it is like witch-doctorage; in order to differentiate themselves from the others, each company puts in some kind of special “secret ingredient” that they claim makes it better than anyone else’s. It gets really frustrating, because you can’t compare products easily. And is creatinine more imprtant than manganese? Or should I go with the one with the most MSM? It’s super annoying.

I decided that I wanted to make sure I was getting an excellent foundation of the basics: Glucosamine, Chondroitin, MSM. I wanted Perna Mussel because I’ve heard such good buzz about it in dogs. And based on a very interesting little study that I don’t think anyone ever went anywhere with (i.e., it was never studied further), I wanted hyaluronic acid.

My front-runners were Glyco-Flex II (I knew I’d have to add the HA) and Synovi G3 (ditto). Each was going to cost me about $20/mo, plus whatever I was going to pay for the HA.

But then I was surfing around the Dover Saddlery site and a little lightbulb went off. Horse supplements are exactly the same as dog supplements, in almost all cases; the only difference is that the horse supplements are actually substantially cheaper because you’re not paying for the liver-based filler that makes a dog capsule yummy to the dog. And Dover (the retail store) is only a mile from my house.

So I spent a while comparing ingredients and doing lots of division problems and stopped there today and came back with Total Joint Care. It’s a very high quality supplement, lots of trainers swear by it, and while it’s hideously expensive for horses it’s fabulously cheap for dogs.

I started today, giving Clue 1/10 of the daily horse dose. It will provide

600 mg Glucosamine

300 mg Chondroitin

300 mg MSM

100 mg vitamin C

5 mg zinc

20 mg hyaluronic acid

The only thing it doesn’t have is the perna mussel, but I can get very good human perna mussel for a low price. She already gets, and will continue to get, salmon oil every day as an Omega 3 supplement.

My cost per month will go down to $5.50 for the Total Joint Care and about another buck for the perna. We’ll keep giving her connective tissue treats (trachea and lung) and hopefully this will be a regimen we can keep up for her and for any other Cardi that comes into the house to keep joints as healthy as possible. Yay!

2 thoughts on “Supplement success! (gratuitous title so it will come up in a google search: Ramard Total Joint Care for dogs)”

Totally unrelated question… what do you think of this food:http://www.petcurean.com/index.php?page_id=115
I use their NOW! grain free line for the cats and I was thinking of Summit holistic adult for Bella… thanks for letting me pick your brain 😉 I bought her a bag of Natural Balance original all life stages today so I’m not in a huge rush (just a small bag) but I really like most of Petcurean pet products and it’s made in my province which I like.